Professor Michael Lewis has been awarded a three-year grant of $291,166 by ONR and the University of Florida for his project entitled “Cognition and Collaboration in Network Centric Operations: Understanding and Measuring Macrocognition in Teams." An optional two year extension will potentially bring the grant amount to $483,628.

The Visual Information Systems Center (VISC) is pleased to announce that Katherin Peperzak’s Pathology Visualization poster was awarded the Best Scientific Poster in Pathology Informatics at the Advancing Practice, Instruction and Innovation Informatics (APIII) Conference, 2006, in Vancouver, B.C. Katherin was a visiting researcher with the VISC from the medical school last term and is a member of the Visualization Interest Group, which is sponsored by VISC.

SIS congratulates former Ph.D. student Gouray Cai, who was recently promoted to Associate Professor at the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. Dr. Cai currently works in his department’s Spatial Information and Intelligence Laboratory.

SIS alum Norman Horrocks promoted to level of Officer in the Order of Canada. In July of 2006 Governor General Michaelle Jean named 25 officers and 52 members to this prestigious order, which was established in 1967 to recognize outstanding achievements and public service. Induction into the Order is Canada’s highest honor for lifetime achievement.

Associate Professor Hassan Karimi is currently serving as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Location Based Services. Hassan’s research interests include geospatial information systems, grid/distributed/parallel computing, mobile computing, computational geometry, in-car navigation systems, spatial algorithms, and spatial databases. Additionally, authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts electronically. For full instructions for authors and to access the journal’s homepage, visit: www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17489725.asp.

The Visual Information Systems Center (VISC) has received another grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Education. As a result, VISC will be continuing its work on metadata, which includes the Pennsylvania Safe Schools Program.

Assistant Professor Stuart Shulman to participate in: Coding Across the Disciplines: A Project-Based Workshop on Manual Text Annotation Techniques. Funded by the Political Science Program and the Studies of Policy, Science and Engineering component of the Science and Society Program, the workshop will bring social and computer scientists together with the long-term goals of fostering a community interested in the development of new annotation research partnerships, while setting high scientific standards for consistency, reliability, transparency, and replicability.

Professor of Archival Studies and Chair of the Library and Information Science Program, Richard Cox was recently recognized by the Society of American Archivists for this outstanding service. During the period of 2002-2006, Dr. Cox served as SSA Publications Editor and also authored Lester J. Cappon and the Relationship of History, Archives, and Scholarship in the Golden Age of Archival Theory and Understanding Archives and Manuscripts.

The Visual Information Systems Center (VISC) is pleased to announce that students Matt Duncan, Matt Kelley, and Jeff Jacobsen have published a paper in the latest issue of Computer Graphics from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The impetus for the paper was Matt Duncan’s experience while working at the VISC Lab as an intern, where he assisted Jeff Jacobson with experiments on navigation of VR methods. Currently, Matt Duncan is a high school senior at Yorktown High in Alexandria Virginia. Of special note is the fact that the ACM selected one of the paper’s graphics as the illustration for the front cover of the issue.

SIS is pleased to announce that the Center for National Preparedness (CNP) has received a grant from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The Center will be developing complex simulation models of the behaviors of victims of bioterrorist attacks.

SIS alum Michael Williams named general manager of US Steel’s Gary Works. In addition to overseeing US Steel’s largest integrated facility, Williams will manage East Chicago Tin in East Chicago, Indiana, and US Steel’s Midwest Plant in Portage, Indiana. Michael is a 1983 SIS graduate with a minor in Economics. He also graduated from Indiana University’s Executive Management Program.